Includes bibliographical references (pages 225-230)

Introduction -- Pharmakos: the scapegoat -- The discovery of drug addiction -- The scapegoat as drug and the drug as scapegoat -- Medicine: the faith of the faithless -- Communions, holy and unholy -- Pharmacomythology: medicine as magic -- Licit and illicit healing: persecutions for witchcraft and drugcraft -- Opium and Orientals: the model American scapegoats -- Drugs and devils: the conversion cure of Malcolm X -- Food abuse and foodaholism: from soul watching to weight watching -- Pharmacracy: medicine as social control -- Missionary medicine: holy wars on unholy drugs -- Cures and controls: panaceas and panapathogens -- Temptation and temperance: the moral perspective reconsidered -- The control of conduct: authority versus autonomy -- Appendix: a synoptic history of the promotion and prohibition of drugs

A psychoanalyst reports on the causes of drug abuse and views addicts and pushers as society's scapegoats

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